When writing Java code relying on Spring and JPA, you may eventually come to the need of some scheduling; since Quartz is by far the reference in this field, you think you will solve all of your problems by reading the appropriate page on Spring docs. Wrong, at least if you need some Spring goodies like @Autowired and @Transactional.

Syncope needs a new workflow engine, for many good reasons: here's why I've started playing around with Activiti.
Activiti looks really interesting because of features and Apache 2.0 license; moreover, its spicy story makes it even more attractive.

I recently presented some aspects of the renewed Apache Cocoon power through its latest (and not yet completed) release, 3.0.
Today I am going to present some features of the Hippo Cocoon Toolkit, whose aim is to provide an alternative, Cocoon 3.0 based, toolkit for building front-end web sites while relying upon Hippo CMS and Repository.

I've recently come up to a very wicked problem in Syncope, and a saving blog post pointed me in the right direction:
Getting your persistence access right when working with background jobs in Spring can be tricky.

Some articles are already around about Apache Cocoon 3.0, a deep rewrite of an Apache project that is bringing to the community innovative concepts since 1998.
To be honest, the latest release is slowly approaching to a stable level, especially if compared to the wide spread and appreciation that 2.x series used to have - and still has, to a certain extent - all around the world.

HSQLDB is a very nice and complete all-Java DBMS, particularly useful when doing quick test-outs or maven tests.
A while ago, a bug has been discovered in release 2.0.0 that is causing issues with BLOB management: this is a considerable issue especially with @Lob fields in Hibernate.